Place

This hardback sits solidly on my desk; the title letters, ART DECO CITY, are debossed in gold and catch the light. Fanning the pages I pause inside the back cover; Arnold Schwartzman, OBE, stands in front of a white painted art deco house smiling in...

Dreary grey weather cloaked his late November birthday. What to do, where to go? A walk followed by pub grub had seemed like a good idea but the damp air cooled our enthusiasm. We decided on a trip to Peterborough for a bit of pre-Christmas...

After every high tide the sea dumps seaweed and debris on the beach; known as the strandline it is a constantly changing landscape.
Jean Sprackland is more widely known as a poet and this book is her first foray into non fiction. In an interview with...

It’s conker time! October winds knock lime green spheres to the grass, spiked sheaths spear the earth where they fall. Three horse chestnut trees stand on a triangular piece of ground near my house, have stood there for decades, their strong limbs reach out beyond...

Dark crimson and brown leather-bound tomes, and others like them, emerge every so often from the blackness several stories deep beneath the reading rooms of the British Library; on demand the volumes rise up from London’s bowels.
A young man with a faraway look in his...

Six authors* shared their experience of travel writing with an audience of one hundred and twenty people in London on Saturday 6 October 2018. The ‘Travel Writing Study Day’ took place in the comfortable Knowledge Centre Theatre, a state-of-the-art meeting venue annexed to the British...

The 16 September 2018 is a milestone; it was the first exhibition of my writing and the first reading of my work.
Earlier in the year, it was the tail end of June, the impulse to apply for a residency with Caroline Salem took hold and I'm very...

Some of my closest friends visibly shuddered when I told them I was hoping to spend time in a crypt. Stephen’s eyes flickered like a dodgy light fitting as he repeatedly asked,
‘But what would you do down there?’
I wasn’t really sure. It was more a...

Collage has been taken up by the masses in the digital age; if you use software to edit and rearrange images to produce new work you are likely to be collaging, and if you manipulate photographs you are likely to be producing photomontage* of a...

‘James Cook: The Voyages’ is on at the British Library, London, until 28 August 2018. Pay a small fee and take a couple of hours walking through the life and times of one of the most famous explorers in history. The exhibition charts three voyages...

Broadway Market teams with parents and pushchairs seeking a free spot on the pavement to drink a cappuccino. Number seven has a somewhat dour grey painted frontage but the large window is colourfully displayed with fabrics and graffiti style art. Shop owner Barley Massey told...

Farmers struggle to bale hay in clouds of yellow dust kicked up by a warm wind from the continent. It is July, a record-breaking month, dry and blisteringly hot. I sit in an airy barn at the Wysing Arts Centre in the heart of rural...